1950-1970 / Manuscript

A memo from anthropologist [Margaret Mead](/biographies/margaret-mead)'s papers at the Library of Congress, recording her interest in LSD and other psychedelics in the summer of 1954 and her work with [Harold Abramson](/biographies/harold-abramson)'s research team, including [Conan Kornetsky](/biographies/conan-kornetsky) and [Murray Jarvik](/biographies/murray-jarvik).

The psychologist Betty Eisner (1915–2004) recalls being the first research subject in Sidney Cohen's LSD study at UCLA in October 1955, quoting at length from the report she wrote after the session. The excerpt describes the psychological tests she was asked to take while under the drug, and her sense that they were trivial beside what she was experiencing. It is the opening chapter of her unpublished memoir, Remembrances of LSD Therapy Past (2002).